Free Love's Second Chance by Myne Whitman

questions. He’d taken her to meet them after all. “My mother loved you.”
    “ Then I don’t understand. Why did they tell me you didn’t want me anymore?”
    Kevwe recoiled. “Why would my parents do that?”
    “ I’d like to know too.” A strange smile played on her lips.
    “ Efe, this is serious. I’d understand if someone had intercepted the message from my dad, but w ho returned your ring? ” That had been the final nail in the coffin when his search for her ended fruitlessly. And there was no way his parents could have deliberately hurt him, not while he was on a hospital bed.
    “ I returned the ring, but not willingly!” Her heart lightened at t he confusion on his face, he’d not been a part of it. All along, from Utako to the hotel, and back home, she’d wondered if he was playing a charade. Was it possible he’d broken up with her, but now wanted a devious way to get back into her good books?
    “ Your parents said they’d convinced you I was unworthy, and you wanted them to pass along your message to me. Your father was ecstatic you never wanted to see or talk to me . Your mother was there too, she took my engagement ring at the end.”
    “ Stop this! Don’t make up these stories,” Kevwe snapped, his fingers drumming on his knees as he moved forward on his seat. “It was a miracle I did not die when I learnt you left me.”
    Anger burned low in him. Efe and his father had not got on, but the old man couldn’t have taken matters into his hands. His mother knew how close he was to Efe, and had loved her like a daughter.
    “ Do you call me a liar?” Efe asked, her voice rising over his.
    “ Someone is clearly playing with the truth.” Kevwe shook his head in vehemence. “Listen, my parents stood by me through it all, my mother in particular. When I wanted to give up because you, Efe, you were not there, she sat at my bedside throughout the night and spoon-fed me . When the POP cast itched, it was my mother who scratched it for me . Where were you when the pain overwhelmed me, and I cried like a baby? Where were you w hen the physiotherapist pushed me to learn to walk again? Were you there to encourage me? Were you?”
    Kevwe jerked out of the dark past to the present, and heard Efe run out of the room. He followed her, but stood at the bedroom door while she blew her nose into a handkerchief. He bit his tongue and turned his head away.
    Efe had not been able to stop the sobs. It broke her heart to hear him talk about the aftermath of his accident with such pain, and she’d not been there to support him. She raised a face covered with streaming tears up to him. “That must have been horrible time for you. I can’t imagine the terrible suffering you went through.”
    “ So you understand why I don’t want to hear any bad word about my parents. They were there for me when you disappeared.”
    Fresh tears sprang to Efe’s eyes, but she blinked them away. This was the worst mix-up of all time, and it frustrated her he still didn’t quite believe she hadn’t abandoned him. She walked to the settee, and this time he took the armchair.
    “ I don’t think we’ll achieve anything by going round in circles,” she said, “There are three people who witnessed what I just told you, your father, his friend, Mr. Edewor and your mother. We can find out the truth from any of them…” Efe tried to piece the fabric of what had truly happened in 2002 together . Had it been a conspiracy?
    The calm in her voice struck him, and looking closer, Kevwe accepted she told him the truth as she knew it. It would be convenient to blame Efe for accepting he broke their engagement, but he remembered he had also taken as gospel his parents’ words that she left him. He tugged at the collar of his shirt.
    Perhaps he could accept his father had deceived her, but his mother? He thought of Ofure, but his twin only knew the same as him, exactly what their parents had told them.
    Efe crossed her legs, damning